Torridon: the mountains most people never reach

Most people who visit the Scottish Highlands make it to Glencoe. A good number make it to Skye. Fewer than one in ten makes it to Torridon. It's not that Torridon is harder to reach — it's about four hours from Inverness on good roads. It's that it takes a deliberate decision to go somewhere that isn't famous.

Torridon is not famous. Ben Nevis is famous. The Quiraing is famous. Torridon — despite containing two of the finest mountains in Scotland — remains largely unknown outside of serious hillwalking circles. That's partly what makes it what it is.

What Torridon actually is

Torridon sits on the northwest coast of Scotland, south of Gairloch. The landscape is built on Torridonian sandstone — some of the oldest rock exposed at the surface of the earth, between 750 million and one billion years old. The mountains have a quality that comes from that age: more sculpted, more angular, with ridgelines that have a character you don't find in younger ranges. The light catches them differently in the morning. You notice it immediately when you arrive.

The two main mountains are Beinn Alligin and Beinn Eighe. Beinn Alligin — known as the Jewel of Torridon — is a horseshoe ridge with a traverse that's one of the most satisfying mountain days in Scotland. Beinn Eighe is longer, wilder, with a quartzite summit plateau that feels like somewhere else entirely. They're very different mountains and they require different things from you.

Why so few people go

The honest answer is logistics. Getting to Torridon from London requires a flight or a long drive north, then another hour and a half from Inverness. You're not passing through it on the way to somewhere else — you go because you specifically decided to go there. Which means you have to already know about it.

The other reason is that there's no single famous hook. Ben Nevis has 'highest mountain in the UK'. The Quiraing has a million photographs. Torridon has neither. What it has instead is two days of mountain terrain that people who've been there describe as among the best mountain days of their lives. That reputation travels slowly, through people who've actually done it.

What it's actually like

We spend two days in Torridon on the Scotland trip, with an overnight wild camp on the ridgeline between them. Full pack, camping gear, everything on your back. The wild camp sits in the Coire Mhic Nobuil. In good conditions — not guaranteed in August, but possible — the sunset over the Torridon peaks is difficult to describe without sounding like you're exaggerating.

The Torridon days are the hardest part of the trip. That's deliberate. If you're building an eight-day expedition through Scotland, there should be a section that asks something of you. Torridon is that section.

Afterwards, we drive over the Bealach na Bà — one of the steepest road passes in the UK — into Applecross for dinner. Seafood on the west coast after two days in the wilderness. It's become one of the things people specifically mention when they talk about the trip. You earn that meal.

I said earlier that most people never reach Torridon. If you're reading this, you now have no excuse for not knowing it exists.